Session title: Data Springboard

Typical inspection issues

Managers and teachers need to monitor students’ progress closely and intervene quickly when students are at risk of not completing.

Leaders and managers do not check rigorously the progress that apprentices make. Consequently, interventions for apprentices who are underperforming are not always made as quickly as for 16 to 19 study programme or adult learners.

Duration

Half-day session.

Information for event organisers

The Data Springboard is designed to challenge the perceived data hierarchy in education and training. Retention and achievement rates simply tell the story of learners who have left. Any quality improvement information derived from this analysis cannot benefit the learners on whom the data was collected. Using the Data Springboard, staff drill down through progressively more reactive layers of data to find their most suitable hair-trigger indicators of underperformance – the very first signs that a learner is becoming at risk of underachieving or leaving early.

The session helps staff to articulate the difference between indicators that something may be wrong and the issues that are causing any underperformance. This information enables them to precisely identify the weakest aspects of their provision and develop SMARTI actions that impact on learners who are on programme now. The session also introduces staff to a powerful development plan and quality improvement tool for managing the resolution of any issues.

Publicity information for potential delegates

Do you sometimes feel there is a little too much bureaucracy in education and training? Or that your hungry management information system feels to be more about accountability than answers? Or that you simply fail to relish the idea of interrogating a set of spreadsheets… Then the Data Springboard might be just the session you haven’t been looking for. Headline retention and achievement statistics, the bedrock of traditional self assessment, are the weakest streams of data for on-going quality improvement. So how can the Data Springboard and the job of a football manager help you identify a rich seam of information that will make a difference to you and your learners now?

This session will enable staff to:

identifylow-level datarelevant to their learnersand set outa monitoring strategy

use the Data Springboard to investigate andset out the indicators of disengagement

use the Data Springboard to challenge their approach to curriculum- and organisational-level quality improvement:

writevaluable and responsive targets and milestones using volatile data to monitor the impact of quality improvement work

monitor the relative performance ofsubgroups.

What the delegates say

‘A member of the A-level Business team has just popped into my office to say she can’t believe the whole team are still here at this time on the last day of term and completely absorbed in planning their volatile indicator for next year!’ South Downs College

‘Unmissable.’ NESCOT

‘Finally, breaking through barriers to deliver a session which speaks volumes over and above the general ‘quality’ assistance received in the past.’ Rutledge Job Link

‘I remain inspired by the workshop you ran.’ Walsall College

‘After hearing about Volatile Indicators from my PTM, I decided to experiment with some ideas for our new Creative Writing A Level. There are two indicators, a tumblr share page for inspirations and the practice that we all bring the book we’re reading to class and put it on the table in front of us. The tumblr page is used for images, quotes from texts we’re reading, ideas for writing or things overheard in the world that could be used for dialogue or whatever else the student feels is inspiring! The books we bring are discussed, with passages read out in class. The teacher is required to be involved in these activities too. Both of these are checked each week (once out of three sessions), sometimes with discussion or with writing tasks linked to the tumblr posts or reading. There are the expected benefits of being able to see who is involved in the course at this level. I have been able to catch a particular student ‘drifting away’ and get her involved again through these indicators. There are the pragmatic implications that Creative Writing students have to be curious about the use of language and ideas around them and that they should be reading so these indicators communicate part of the ethos of the course.’ Andrew Zincke, NewVIc

Why not see what other providers said about this training? Click here, then ‘Filter by session’, and select the title for an overview of providers’ feedback. You may then wish to ‘Filter by provider’ to see further details of the impact it has had on individual staff. These comments can be invaluable when generating curiosity about forthcoming training.